Back-Stage Pass

I was never much of a concert-goer. Some of my friends went frequently. My favorite band in high school was Chicago, and I did go to their performance when they came to town. I was always an admirer of the songwriter and performer Paul Simon and I saw him and his amazing stage full of musicians on their “Final Tour” here in Houston just a few years ago. There is a radio station in Houston with their fund-raisers and as incentives, they sometimes give away tickets to donors. Sometimes they have special offers with back-stage passes attached, so the lucky donor can meet the musical talent.

You would have one experience seeing the celebrity on the stage, and still, another, seeing them up close, shaking hands and exchanging a few words. In relationships, we experience different layers of knowing people. You can know people by their work, know them casually, all the way up to being close personal friends.

As Christians, we would say that God knows us even better than we know ourselves. After that, we know ourselves better than anyone. And what can we know of God? It must be quite limited. Only God truly knows God. We might add this, however: Paul teaches that insofar as we have been given the Spirit, our knowledge of God is expanded by revelation.

But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory… as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
    nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
(1 Corinthians 2:7-1)

This is as if we are given not just a seat in the hall to see the performer, but a back-stage pass and even the beginnings of conversation and relationship. When Jesus begins his messianic ministry publicly and goes to Nazareth to pray and read in his hometown synagogue, he announces something special. He says of the prophecy of Isaiah, declaring a figure of Good News, anointed by the Spirit, that it is about him. He says indeed that this prophecy is fulfilled in his having read it aloud.

Jesus began to speak in the synagogue at Nazareth: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.
(Luke 4:21-24)

The townsfolk look at Jesus and think they know him. They recognize him as Joseph’s Son. They know him only in the framework of their hometown stage. But the Spirit which anoints Jesus into his ministry, revealing the kingdom of God, is the Spirit that opens the eyes of people to know him more fully. This is not Joseph’s Son, merely. This is the Son of God, the Messiah, who brings healing, and the Good News.

Part of knowing God more deeply is to sit in stillness with the Spirit within us. To know yourself, abiding quietly in the Spirit given you, is to come to know God beyond human wisdom. What one learns through the steady practice of Christian meditation is that one goes only so far knowing God with a search that objectifies God. To seek God by making yourself present, subjectively acknowledging God’s promised presence is a different approach. This is the awakening to Jesus’s words, “Today this scripture [about the anointed figure with the ultimate good message] has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This is progress in what St. Paul describes: the revelation of God to us through the Spirit. It is good to go to the show; it is engaging, entertaining. It is so much more, however, to enter into a relationship with the one who composed the music of the universe.